4 to Watch: Nathan Chen Slips Up, Shiffrin Misses Podium, Crash-Stricken Snowboard Star & Skeleton Racing Highlight Day 6 of the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics
Day 6 in Pyeongchang featured skater Nathan Chen and skier Mikaela Shiffrin's, along with snowboard star Lindsey Jacobellis
•
These are our 4 Olympic athletes to watch on Day 6.
From Nathan Chen's second heartbraking fall to Mikaela Shiffrin's failed gold medal defense, Connecticut's crash-stricken snowboard star and a birthday boy nicknamed "Warhorse," there was no shortage of must-see action on Day 6 of the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics.
Without further ado, here are our four to Watch on Day 6:
Getty Images
Mikaela Shiffrin in action during the Audi FIS Alpine Ski World Cup Women's Giant Slalom on Dec. 19, 2017 in Courchevel, France. Shiffrin, a winter Olympics contender from the United States, beat out France's Tessa Worley for the World Cup in giant slalom.
1. Chen Stumbles Again But Advances to Final With Teammates Rippon, Zhou
Getty Images
Coldplay – O
Getty Images
Coldplay – Fix You, Paradise
AP Photo/David J. Phillip
El Tango de Roxanne – Ewan McGregor, Moulin Rouge Soundtrack
Ronald Martinez/Getty Images
Chasing Cars – Snow Patrol
Getty Images
Wonderwall – Paul Anka
Jamie Squire/Getty Images
Dust in the Wind -- Kansas
Getty Images
The Sound of Silence – Disturbed
Getty Images
Halo and Who Run the World (Girls) – Beyoncé
Getty Images
With or Without You – April Meservy
Getty Images
Medley – Miss Saigon
AP
Medley – Star Wars Soundtrack
Getty Images
Everybody Wants to Rule the World – Tears for Fears
Robert Cianflone/Getty Images
Singin' in the Rain – Gene Kelly
Robert Cianflone/Getty Images
Let Me Think About It – Ida Corr
Getty Images
Hava Nagila
Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved
Modern Times Soundtrack – Charlie Chaplin
Jean Catuffe/Getty Images
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon Soundtrack – Tan Dun
Dean Mouhtaropoulos/Getty Images
Help! – The Beatles
Getty Images
I'll Take Care of You – Joe Bonamassa & Beth Hart
After a shaky debut, Nathan Chen stumbles again in Pyeongchang, falling three times to finish 17th in the men’s short program.
Leading up to the Games, Chen said he’s worked to improve every aspect of his performance, adding "more passion in my skating and more of a connection to the music.” But can he find momentum after two sub-par starts?
Chen, a pre-games favorite, missed on all his jumps, plummeting to 17th place with a tentative and passionless showing.
Chen’s teammates will advance, finishing above the 18-year-old. Veteran Adam Rippon, 28, lived up to his flair for the dramatic programs, performing to techno song "Let Me Think About It" by Ida Corr vs. Fedde Le Grand, earning him seventh. Seventeen-year-old teammate Vincent Zhou finished the short program in 12th.
Chen, Rippon and Zhou will go for gold Saturday morning (Friday night in the U.S.)
2. Redemption Denied: Lindsey Jacobellis Fails to Medal in Snowboard Cross
Getty Images
Born in Danbury, Connecticut, Lindsey Jacobellis now calls Vermont home. She's the most decorated woman in snowboard cross outside of the Olympics, which for her has been plagued by an unlucky crash streak. She did win silver in 2006, and she'll be looking to add gold to that Olympic shelf in Pyeongchang.
Getty Images
The 32-year-old Jacobellis was inspired by her older brother and started snowboarding when she was about 10, according to NBCOlympics.com. She started off competing in all major disciplines -- slopestyle, halfpipe and boardercross -- before specializing in the cross later in her career. She also used to compete in freestyle snowboarding.
Getty Images
Apart from earning silver in the 2006 Olympic Winter Games, Jacobellis is a five-time world champion, two-time World Cup season champion and 10-time X Games gold medalist.
Getty Images
Jacobellis is the dominant female force in the sport -- but not in the Olympics, where she's been plagued by crashes and other issues. In 2006, she wiped out on one of the final jumps of the race doing a celebratory technique, erasing a huge lead and ending up having to settle for silver. In 2010 at the Vancouver Games she crashed in a semi final heat and didn't make it to the medal event. She crashed again four years later in Sochi after recovering from a left ACL tear.
Getty Images
The stray dogs of Sochi became an international heart-wrencher, and though Jacobellis didn't leave Russia with a medal, she did adopt a stray pup she found there. He now lives with her in the U.S., according to NBCOlympics.com.
Getty Images
Jacobellis lists "Animal Lover" at the top of her Twitter bio and has been working with the ASPCA for years.
Getty Images
Jacobellis loves to surf when she's not snowboarding.
Getty Images
Jacobellis is 5 feet 4 inches tall and 119 pounds. She turns 33 in August.
Getty Images
Apart from surfing in the offseason, Jacobellis likes fashion, collecting shoes, watching movies and hanging out with her friends in Encinitas, according to her official Olympic bio.
Getty Images
Jacobellis was a member of the U.S. Snowboarding team by age 17. According to her official Olympic bio, she has 27 World Cup wins and 43 total podium finishes in 72 starts, which is "more than any other snowboardcross racer on the planet."
Jacobellis, a five-time world champion, reached the finals of the event, then held onto a lead for the first two-thirds of the race. But she faded late, and finished in fourth place.
Italian Michela Moioli, France's Julia Pereira De Sousa Mabileau and the Czech Republic's Eva Samkova finished in the top three.
For Jacobellis, it's just the latest moment in a disappointing Olympic career. It began 12 years ago, in Torino, when she seemed to have the gold medal wrapped up, with a huge lead down the race’s final stretch. But she tried a flashy move off a jump and fell, and settled for silver.
Since then, the Olympics have been her kryptonite. She crashed in early rounds in both 2008 and 2012, and failed to reach the final.
And now, one more disappointment: A solid run, but a finish just off the medal stand.
3. Heavy Favorite Shiffrin Struggles in Slalom, Finishes Fourth
Mikaela Shiffrin, the heavy favorite to win the women's slalom and claim her second gold medal in as many days, missed the podium and finished in fourth place in Pyeongchang on Friday.
Shiffrin’s fourth-place finish is an astonishing upset, as the slalom is her specialty: Last year, she became the first woman to win three consecutive slalom world titles in 78 years and she won gold in Sochi.
Frida Hansdotter of Sweden took gold, Wendy Holdener of Switzerland took silver and Katharina Gallhuber of Austria won bronze.
The 22-year-old American vomited before her first run, saying her nausea was "kind of sudden" and "almost felt like a virus.” Although she used the break between runs to rest up (literally—she is known for her love of napping) second run wasn’t enough to get on the podium.
The day before, Shiffrin took gold in the giant slalom.
Getty Images
Born and raised in Lake Placid, Alpine skier Andrew Weibrecht will turn 32 as the Olympics in Pyeongchang get underway. One of the biggest surprises at the Vancouver Games in 2010, the birthday boy nicknamed "Warhorse" is looking to add to his growing list of Olympic medals.
Getty Images
Weibrecht was inspired to start skiing after watching his older brother, Jonathan, according to NBCOlympics.com.
Andy Newman/Florida Keys News/HO
Weibrecht was the surprise of Vancouver, coming in third place in the Super-G to earn a bronze at the 2010 Olympic Winter Games. He did even better in Sochi, earning a silver, and hopes to take home the gold in Pyeongchang. He has performed his best at the Olympics, coming in no better than ninth in various events in the World Championships between 2009 and 2015.
Andy Newman/Florida Keys News/HO
Weibrecht is 5 feet 7 inches tall and weighs 190 pounds. He'll turn 32 on Feb. 10, the first Saturday of the Olympics in Pyeongchang.
Shutterstock
He's nicknamed "Warhorse" for the way he attacks the mountain. He also has two brothers and two sisters, a daughter named Addy and likes to fish, hunt, hike, camp and bike in his spare time.
Also on the slopes was Sochi silver medalist Andrew Weibrecht, a local hero nicknamed "Warhorse" from Lake Placid -- but he could not make it three straight Olympics with a medal in super-G, having taken bronze in 2010 and silver four years ago. The often-injured American missed a gate after flying too far off a jump. Ted Ligety of the United States, the 2013 world champion in super-G, also failed to finish.
Getty Images
Getty Images
Skeleton racer John Daly was born in Queens and currently lives in Washington, D.C., but Long Island (Smithtown) is his hometown. His claim to fame? He says his hair is "wind proof, helmet proof and bullet proof," even when sliding headfirst at a speed faster than most cars go on the highway.
Getty Images
Daly initially tried sliding sports in sixth grade after a recommendation from his gym coach, according to NBCOlympics.com. First he competed in luge, then switched to skeleton. He was a track athlete in college and broke the decathlon record at State University of New York at Plattsburgh.
Getty Images
Imagine plummeting headfirst at high speeds down a steep, dangerous ice track on a teenie tiny sled. That's skeleton. It's considered to be the world's first sliding sport.
Getty Images
The 32-year-old Daly has been to two prior Olympics. He hasn't medaled in either one and is looking to change course in Pyeongchang. To be fair, he was almost in the running in Sochi but his sled jerked out of the starting point and he skidded. He retired after finishing 15th at Sochi, but then came back and returned to skeleton racing in 2016.
Getty Images
Daly was watching Dan Jansen, a U.S. speed skater, win the 1000m gold medal in 1994. Daly's mother was with Daly at the time and he heard her shout, "we won," instead of "he won," when Jansen emerged victorious. That did it for him, according to NBCOlympics.com.
Getty Images
One of Daly's teammates, Nathan Crumpton, told NBCOlympics.com Daly "does so much ridiculous stuff, I don't know how he hasn't been expelled from the sport a dozen times already. Probably because he's incredibly funny, good looking and extremely likeable."
Getty Images
Daly tells NBCOlympics.com, "I hate when my hair is messed up ... so it never is."
Getty Images
When Daly isn't racing, he sells medical devices to help kids with sleeping disorders. He works for about eight hours each day, then trains for five hours in the evening. According to NBCOlympics.com, he wears a necklace that says, "It's not going to be easy but it's worth it."
Getty Images
Daly is 5 feet 8 inches tall and 163 pounds. He'll be 33 in June.
Getty Images
Daly's dad, Jim, is a retired FDNY medic, while his brother, Jimmy, is with the NYPD, according to NBCOlympics.com. Early in his career, his father -- also a Vietnam War vet -- used to drive nearly six hours to take his son to Lake Placid to train on the weekends.
Skeleton racer John Daly, a Long Island native, will leave his third Olympics without any hardware. He fell out of medal contention after the fourth heat to finish 16th, and the Americans weren't able to rally to reach the medal mix. Matt Antoine, the reigning Olympic bronze medalist, entered the fourth heat ranked 9th before finishing 11th.
Yun Sungbin won the gold medal in the men's skeleton competition at the Pyeongchang Olympics, South Korea's first in the sport. South Korea's "Iron Man" clocked a time of 50.02 in the fourth heat for a cumulative time of 3:20.55. The 23-year-old beat silver medal winner Nikita Tregubov, one of the Olympic Athletes from Russia, by a margin of 1.63 seconds.
Daly had been to two prior Olympics, but hasn't medaled in either one. To be fair, he was almost in the running in Sochi but his sled jerked out of the starting point and he skidded. He retired after finishing 15th at Sochi, but then came back and returned to skeleton racing in 2016.
After a shaky debut,
Nathan Chen stumbles again in Pyeongchang, falling three times to finish 17th
in the men’s short program.
Leading up to the Games,
Chen said he’s worked to improve every aspect of his performance, adding
"more passion in my skating and more of a connection to the music.” But
can he find momentum after two sub-par starts?
Chen, a pre-games
favorite, missed on all his jumps, plummeting to 17th place with a tentative
and passionless showing.
Chen’s teammates will
advance, finishing above the 18-year-old. Veteran Adam Rippon, 28, lived up to
his flair for the dramatic programs, performing to techno song "Let Me
Think About It" by Ida Corr vs. Fedde Le Grand, earning him seventh.
Seventeen-year-old teammate Vincent Zhou finished the short program in
12th.
Chen, Rippon and Zhou
will go for gold Saturday morning (Friday night in the U.S.).
